A suicide …or was it a murder? It was certainly never officially reported! UPDATE! 16 February 2013: Claims that suspected Australian Mossad operative Ben Zygier was secretly jailed before his death in prison have brought to a head years of resentment at the way Israel’s security services use court gag orders to suppress sensitive information from the media.

As the world now knows, the Prisoner X case was the subject of a court order issued in 2010 that was extreme. There was to be no public discussion, mention or hint of ‘Prisoner X’, ‘Mister X’, ‘cell number 15 in Ayalon Prison’, the conditions there or ‘anything about that cell’. The judge also ruled that any mention or hint of the very existence of the gag order was an offence.

My sources told me that it was “all hands on deck” for Mossad and Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet. Their intelligence had told them that the mainstream Israeli media would most likely grudgingly abide by the court gag order, and that the main task for censors would be to “pull down” the work of bloggers who would be posting links to our story.

It did not work out quite like that.

Minutes before the program aired in Australia on Tuesday night, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper defied authorities by posting the Foreign Correspondent promo on its website. The prime minister’s office reacted immediately :: Read the full article »»»»